Journal Entry

Tuesday, October 16thYesterday was a good day.

November is rapidly approaching, and I’m coaching three or four folks in preparation for the terrifying marathon that is National Novel Writing Month. These are all people who have told me (often) that they want to write a book, but have never been able to get it done. National Novel Writing Month is a great project to get that done, but it’s also a really brutal way to write your first book. The sheer amount of writing per day is just…unbelievable. Unreasonable, certainly.

So, anyway, I’m taking people who think they want to write, and daring them to participate in an event that will scare them off it forever. To try to avoid that, I’ve set up this whole regimen of intensive pre-writing work that will help smooth the transition. I hope.

But, yeah, I’d meant all along to be doing my own assignments, to provide as samples for them to go off (Table of Contents, short synopsis, character descriptions, long synopsis, that sort of thing), but I never actually got around to sharing those with them. Yesterday, I decided enough was enough and sat down to type all that stuff up in one place, so that I could share it out. I’d done everything but the two synopses, and the long synopsis isn’t due until Friday of this week, so that wasn’t really that bad.

Anyway, I sat down with the intent of doing just the short synopsis on The Shepherd, my next Sleeping Kings novel, and it just, all on its own, turned into the long synopsis. And what I mean by “short” (according to the assignment) is “1-page” and what I mean by long (according to actual, living history) is “12-pages.” So, yeah, I wrote out the whole plot for The Shepherd yesterday, when I had no clue that I’d figured out that much of the story.

It’s good, too. That’s the part that really surprised me. I decided nearly a year ago what would happen in Sarah’s story, but I didn’t know exactly how, or in what order. When I sat down to jot down some ideas yesterday, everything just fell into place. That’s one of my favorite things about writing, when that happens. And then, when I was done, I read back through it and fell in love with the story. It’s got its weak spots, and I’m going to have to do a ton of research (after November, for the rewrite) for accuracy’s sake, but it’s a really good story.

And…that still really gets my blood pumping. I was really on a kind of high, all evening yesterday. As soon as I got home, I found T– in the back yard, and told her all about it. D– came over, and I told him about it. T– and I went to our marriage class last night, and I told K– and N– all about it. I’m sure everybody else is bored sick of it now, but I’m still in a good mood over it. I can’t wait to get started.

Oh! After class, K– and N– came over to our place, and we all watched The Transformers on D–‘s HD-DVD player. So awesome. That is just such a fun movie. It was a blast, and I think we were all satisfied with the decisions made, that kept us up a little too late on a week night. It was fun.